From: AlevAdil01-AT-aol.com
Date: Thu, 30 May 2002 10:38:11 EDT
Subject: Re: Lecturers on orientalism



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re Tracy's comments on Kuchuk Hanem in Flaubert.
Your analysis and translation miss quite a lot. Kuchuk Hanim does not 
translate as 'the little woman', hanim means 'lady' rather than woman and 
kucuk hanim 'little lady' is a term commonly used socially to young girls in 
their early teens. That Flaubert's love interest calls herself that is 
interesting for if one understands the language the inference is not so much 
of female surpression but of an alias - a sense (of which Flaubert is often 
uneasily aware) that there is more than meets the eye - she's using a nom de 
plume/guerre - 'young lady' - rather than giving her name . She is 
independent - both financially and because she  refuses to be named. 
Kuchuk Hanem is also notably not conventionally feminine - for instance 
Flaubert is  struck both by her intelligence and her snoring - she's no 
Delacroix calender girl. To be fair to Flaubert his book reflects the tension 
between the fantasy and the 'reality' he encounters and the gap between the 
two is not essentialised into the mystery of the orient or embodied in Kuchuk 
Hanim.

Alev Adil 

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